by Scottie Westfall

Digging a badger in Germany with a jagdterrier

You can’t use them to dig groundhogs out of the ground, but seeing as groundhogs are found only in North America, you can’t base all of working terriers on groundhog digging or digging out red foxes for that matter.

European badgers are bigger than any burrowing animals in North America, so of course the largest size of dachshunds and many jadgterriers are bigger than Jack Russells.

In addition to badgers, earthdogs in Germany have to contend with introduced raccoon dogs, which are also larger than a red fox or any other burrowing animals native to eastern North America.

So just keep in mind, when you get advice from the internet, each person who writes information about dogs includes his or her own personal biases into the equation.

I am trying my best avoid it here, but of course, this is next to impossible.

But that’s very different from people who deliberately mislead with supposed “just the facts” commentary.

Also one should keep in mind that the Anglo-Saxon tradition of keeping lots of specialized dogs is really an unusual way of breeding and keeping dogs. Because of simple economic factors, most people in the world have kept dogs that could do a variety of tasks, including hunting a variety of game.

The Germans have always been about breeding versatile dogs, and until Americans began to copy the British traditions, we kept curs, feists, and shepherd dogs that were good for hunting, herding, and guarding the farm.

The Germans do not have the same tradition of hunting dogs that the British do. British hunting traditions have always been elitist, but since the failed revolutions of 1848, the people who lived in the countries that eventually became Germany were given access to the forests to hunt. Germany has an egalitarian hunting tradition, and the number of hunters in Germany is on the increase. In the UK, it’s on the decline.

Germany has to deal with an increasing wild boar population, and they have introduced raccoons and raccoon dogs to worry about. Germany also borders on Eastern Europe and beyond that lies Russia, both of which are far wilder than any place in the British Isles.

In Britain, the biggest predatory mammal is the European badger, which is protected by law (though there is a huge debate about culling them.)

Having been to both countries, I can tell you my assessment. Britain is essentially an island with a bunch of gardens on it. Germany lies at the crossroads of Europe, where wildness and civilization are in quite close proximity.

The idea that we can decide what is a legitimate working animal based solely upon one country’s traditions and wildlife is really quite preposterous.

It us not any different than all the nonsense we hear from the dog show people.

I lived in Lower Saxony for two years, with the British army of the Rhine, and I didn’t get much impression of its countryside being so much ‘wilder’ than many parts of Britain. However, as you infer, maybe I didn’t get far enough east – the Russians wouldn’t let me.

Hunting with dogs is now strictly illegal in the UK, but that’s no reason why the breeds developed for hunting should not remain as the much loved pet and show breeds they always mainly were. As for badgers, it is also strictly illegal to “interfere” with a badger sett, which is probably why Britain has a quarter of Europe’s badger population.

That’s actually not good ecological thinking. Just think of what other organisms might be out of whack because there are now so many badgers, and the badgers now have no predators. Mesopredator release is something that people are just beginning to understand. If you don’t have large predators to control the smaller ones, then the smaller ones will run amok in the ecosystem, and the only way to have something like a healthy ecosystem is to have regulated hunting of these animals.

This isn`t a case of mesopredator release. Badgers are not a recent introduction here. As far as I know they eat earthworms, insects and small mammals. In the UK small mammals will mean rats, mice and maybe baby rabbits. Remember, we have a limited range of small fauna here. There is no word of them preying on gamebirds – we would soon hear all about that. There doesn`t seem to be a Badger population explosion. So which organisms did you mean?

I suppose my feelings about hunting it are – if you can`t eat it and it aint a pest – why bother?

I’m with Elizabeth all the way on her comments here. Dave was talking about the American badger no doubt. Our European badger would be too easy for man to wipe out simply because their woodland setts are so obvious (and avoidable) with all the churned up earth and stones around them. Fortunately Britain’s badgers are widely perceived as the beautiful and delightfully social animals they truly are. When our grandchildren were very young we used to take them badger watching in the woods next to us on warm summer nights. The trouble was that it was very late by the time mum and dad badger and all the youngsters were out playing around the sett so John and Danielle were then fast asleep and so all we could do was to carry them quietly back home. And yes, the main item on the badgers’ supper menu is always the ubiquitous earthworm of which there is seldom any shortage in Britain’s usually moist soil!

One last comment on the subject of brer badger: the only way they can live healthily together is to be very efficient at house cleaning. It’s so amusing watching one of the adults walking backwards away from the sett entrance at night with a big bundle of soiled bedding in its forepaws. They don’t stop to drop the old bedding until they are many metres away from the sett and this evidently helps to keep their home nicely sweet and clean. To me they almost resemble a cross between a giant panda and a a bear cub. That said, we were lucky two days ago to see a pair of wolverines very actively chasing one another in daylight in their large enclosure at nearby Whipsnade animal park and they reminded me so very much of their cousin the european badger, in size, profile (except the tails) and general movement.

Im pro badger and I have to say I found the video unpleasant, the moment they unearthed the fresh green bedding made me feel quite depressed. Considering how conservation is faring these days around the world.

Im not a bunny hugger by any means and have shot and fished for supper many times. The badger to me just shouldn’t be disturbed. Its a wonderful wild creature and I hope vaccinating them against TB is effective.

Its an emotional topic but quite frankly there aren’t enough badgers as far as Im concerned and far too many rabbits. They eat rabbit kits. Rabbits are a real problem and a pest causing untold damage to just about everything in the countryside and even suburbs. It seems foxes badgers and birds of prey just cant keep up. The culling of badgers will just make the situation that much worse.

Rabbits have developed a resistance to mixamatosis introduced to try and keep the population down, they are almost back to the numbers they were before introduction of the disease.

I agree about the UK though, it is almost totally a man made landscape. But those hedgerows, planted forests, gardens and meadows make one very green island full of fascinating wild life that has adapted over many hundreds of years to be fully in tune with that landscape. Many countries could in fact take a lesson from the way agriculture has evolved there. Leaving “natural” areas between and lining fields is a stroke of genius, one would think given how much of the worlds agriculture is conducted with scant regard for anything. Monocroping covering every square kilometre hundreds and even thousands of kilometres wide, dead zones to everything but agriculture.

Sadly hedgerows are under threat in Britain with commercial farming practises.

This is way off topic of the terrier, the blog topic that topic is complicated and very interesting. But certainly larger chested dogs terriers could happily get down a European badger hole? One wouldnt have needed to span their chests at all.